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MAST Staff - 2025 Jan 31SDSS APOGEE Data Now Available at MAST
The SDSS Legacy Archive at MAST (SLAM) now includes data from the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE) survey!
The SDSS Legacy Archive at MAST is a partnership between the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-V) collaboration and MAST, which will host a copy of all science-ready images, spectra, catalogs, and Value Added Catalogs (VACs) across all public SDSS data releases through SDSS-V. Last October, the first survey in the SDSS Legacy Archive at MAST was published, the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) survey.
Now, APOGEE data has been added to SLAM! APOGEE provides high-resolution, infrared-wavelength spectra of over 650,000 unique stars in the Milky Way and other nearby galaxies (like the SMC and LMC). The APOGEE data products include reduced combined spectra, individual visit spectra, and the best-fit model spectrum and measurements from the APOGEE Stellar Parameters and Abundances Pipeline (ASPCAP). ASPCAP provides stellar parameters, radial velocities, chemical abundances for 20 individual elements for most targets observed in APOGEE. APOGEE observed between September 2011 - January 2021 as part of SDSS-III and -IV. The SLAM includes copies of the products from SDSS Data Release 17 (DR17), the final data release of APOGEE, which includes all observations from both phases of APOGEE. A summary of the APOGEE data products available at MAST can be found in the SDSS Legacy Archive at MAST User Manual.
Data Access
The SDSS Legacy Archive at MAST User Manual describes how to search for and download SDSS data using MAST interfaces. SDSS data can be accessed at MAST in-browser using the MAST Portal or in Python using astroquery.mast. Search for Mission="SDSS" to view all SDSS data, or use the "Provenance Name" field to search for specific SDSS surveys (for example, "APOGEE" or "MaNGA"). There are also a few Jupyter Notebook tutorials available which demonstrate how to access SDSS data through MAST.
All released SDSS data, including the raw data and pre-science data products, still remain available through the SDSS-provided services including the Science Archive Server (SAS) and Catalog Archive Server (CAS). The copies hosted at MAST provide an additional entry point to discovering and accessing the data, and provide all of the advantages of a multi-mission archive: SDSS data is now available through the same interfaces as HST, JWST, TESS, and Gaia holdings, opening up new opportunities for scientific synergies between missions.
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